WYFF News 4 Today, Greenville 

by Nate Stanley

GREENVILLE, S.C. —Following Texas' progression of a new congressional district map, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-South Carolina, called on state lawmakers to follow suit.

This week, Texas senators passed a new congressional map that favors GOP representation on the national stage by redrawing districts that would add more Republican seats in D.C.

"What they're doing in Texas is they just produced an instant map that suited them. They're not even pretending to have public hearings. They're not pretending to have, you know, subcommittees where people can go and say, 'This isn't how it should be.' They just want to push it through," said Lynn Teague with the South Carolina League of Women Voters, a non-partisan voting advocacy group. 

In a post on X on Tuesday, Norman, who is running for governor, congratulated Texas lawmakers for redrawing the state's congressional map. The post read:

"Congrats to the Texas Senate for doing what republicans in SC need to do. It's time to give republicans across the state a fighting chance to advance conservative values, and give the good people of the 6th [District] a real voice. If republicans refuse to pass legislation this session to redraw the gerrymandered 6th, we will challenge them in Republican primaries. Time to clean up Columbia."

Teague said similarly, changing South Carolina's map would open the state up to legal trouble. "To redesign our map so that CD6 [Congressional District 6] no longer conforms to how the Voting Rights Act has been interpreted for all these decades since it was passed. That would be a very bad thing," she said, "There's no way that you can argue that what is proposed here would not be a total violation of the Voting Rights Act."

In June, the League of Women Voters in South Carolina went before the state Supreme Court to argue that South Carolina's map was unfair to voters in the Lowcountry. The organization has argued that lawmakers skewed District 1 by moving more Republican voters into the district, which used to be a competitive district for both parties.

Teague worries something similar would happen with the 6th District. "What we had of the seven districts, we had five, that would have been pretty easily Republican. We had CD1 [Congressional District 1] that would have been highly competitive, but still plus one Republican and the Voting Rights Act district of CD6. So you don't have to play games to get five easy districts for the Republican Party in South Carolina. But CD1 should be competitive and isn't, and when Ralph Norman said he believes that, all of the districts can be competitive, all he means is competitive for one party," she said.

Read more at the link above.